THE NEXT GENERATION'S FIRST TWO YEARS - WHEN THINGS WERE ROTTEN?

William Shatner conducts candid interviews with cast and crew, not to mention studio heads, in a look back at Star Trek: The Next Generation's first two seasons. (Hard to believe that "The Next Gen", or "TNG", finished its run twenty years ago.)

Before things settled down and the producers were able to figure out what it was that TNG was trying to be, they had to make it through years one and two. After that what the viewer got was more soap opera than anything else, but there were some shiny bits in among the sand particles: "Family" and "The Best of Both Worlds", for instance.

Earlier this morning I read this: “The first and second seasons of The Next Generation are almost unwatchable,” says Ronald D. Moore.

Uh... I would apply "almost unwatchable" to Mr. Moore's reboot of Battlestar Galactica. Actually, I think that the first year of ST:TNG is not that bad. While it is obvious that the ride is often bumpy, there are some solid science fiction ideas, as opposed to the later "Love Boat in Space" malady which had taken a firm hold on the series.

To be honest, I went through the DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation earlier this year and I was surprised at how "okay" it was. (I watched three episodes from each of the series' seven seasons.) Now that I think about it Toronto television station Citytv "stripped" the series on weekday mornings about twelve or thirteen years ago. Back then I noticed, looking at TNG just a few years after it finished-up, how badly the show had aged.